Drink To Us
by liebedance
Summary: Butterbeer, hot chocolate, tea, and coffee. Four drinks, four moments.


Her only warning is the sound of a chair scraping against wooden floor before,

"Evans—"

"Go away, Potter. I'm trying to study." Lily doesn't even bother looking up from her book. She doesn't need to. She knows it's him, so used to the way her surname sounds coming from him.

"C'mon, Evans, it's _Christmas_," James says, the teasingly arrogant grin he often dons clear in his voice.

"We still have a Transfiguration exam tomorrow. _Then_ it's Christmas hols."

"Right, I forgot about that… Say, need help with revision? I'm ace at Transfiguration."

"I don't need help from _you_," Lily snaps, turning the page with more force than is strictly necessary. And she _doesn't_. Even if he _is_the best in their year at Transfiguration, even if he _did_ receive top marks in his OWL.

"Hey, I was just offering," James replies, and the softer—almost apologetic—tone in his voice surprises her.

Lily takes a deep breath, steeling herself to make an apology of her own. But, when she finally looks up, James is gone. A brief—and furtive—glance around her does not reveal his whereabouts. But sitting across the library table, in front of the now-empty chair, is a bright red mug, topped with whipped cream and flecks of chocolate. Cautiously, Lily reaches for the mug. When a quick charm reveals—surprisingly enough—that the beverage is benign, Lily brings the mug to her lips and takes a sip.

As the velvety smooth texture and rich taste of dark chocolate—and, is that ginger?—fill her senses, Lily wonders if maybe, _just maybe_, Potter isn't that bad, after all.

-

He tastes like… nothing. Tastes like nothing, and Lily feels nothing, and this is oh-so-very wrong. And, try as she might, Lily cannot force herself to enjoy kissing this blonde and exceedingly handsome Ravenclaw prefect. He's too timid, too well behaved, too serious about life. He's too much of everything that Lily had always thought she wanted in a bloke. And he's nothing—_nothing_—like James.

In the dimly lit common room, amid intoxicated students celebrating Gryffindor's first victory of the year, James had tasted like butterbeer and crisps, the perfect blend of sweet and salty. He had tasted like danger and exhilaration, like wakening after a long and deep sleep to find that the world is not quite what it used to be. It was everything that a kiss should be and everything that Lily had never even known she desired.

And for all that Lily may have regretted kissing James at the time, for all that she's afraid of what a relationship with him might mean, she knows where she belongs.

"I'm sorry," she whispers—not feeling the slightest bit apologetic—as she pulls away from the blonde. "I can't do this." And, with one last kiss on his cheek, Lily leaves the back alley behind Honeyduke's to go find James, and perhaps buy him a butterbeer and some crisps.

-

When Lily accepted James' invitation to tea over the Christmas hols, she'd expected proper china and polite conversation with the Potters and being waited on by house-elves. She had not, however, expected to spend an afternoon with the Marauders, lounging in the sitting room, playing exploding snap and chess, and being regaled by various tales of the boys' mischief.

"See what you've been missing out on all these years?" Remus asks, offering Lily a mug of steaming peppermint tea. "Doesn't this just make you wish you'd fancied James a bit earlier?"

"Maybe," Lily teases, taking the tea and giving Remus a smile. "Seeing Peter kick James' arse at gobstones could've made his arrogance a bit more tolerable."

"You pain me, Evans," James replies, placing a fist on his chest in mock sincerity.

"Yeah," Sirius adds, "Be nice, Evans. That is hardly the worst game that James has played. I think Pete was going easy on him on account of you being here."

"Sod off," James retorts, his ears turning pink. "I could take the lot of you any day, if I wanted. But, I have to let you lot win at_something_. Otherwise being the best at everything else would be no fun."

"Sure," Sirius answers, earning himself a cuff to the head. "Prove your worth with a rematch."

"Care to join?" Remus asks as James and Sirius abandon the chess board for the bag of marbles and begin setting them up.

"I think I'll sit this one out," Lily says, curling her legs underneath her and bringing the mug into her chest. Remus nods and joins the others on the floor in front of the fireplace. And Lily, as she catches James' eye, thinks that she could get used to this type of afternoon tea.

-

It's one of the first things that Lily learns about James once she gets to know him properly. And it never bothers her. Never, that is, until she spends the night in his dorm for the first time.

James Potter wakes at a horribly and disgustingly early hour. Every day. Weekdays, weekends, holidays, no morning is immune to the insufferably perky boy. And, try as he might—though Lily isn't sure how hard he _actually_ tries—he is not one of those quiet morning people. No, he bumps into furniture and curses loudly at the cold floors.

"You know," Lily snaps one morning after a particularly noisy stream of profanity issues from his mouth, "It wouldn't be so cold if you'd wait until a reasonable time to wake up."

"Maybe," James agrees. "But the coffee this early in the morning is much better than the rubbish at the tables at breakfast."

"Is it?" Lily asks, interest piqued through her sleep-muddled brain. Not that Hogwarts' usual coffee is _horrible_, but Lily's used to the coffee her dad makes in the summer—bold and heavy and smooth.

"Definitely. Much stronger, much more flavor," James answers. And then—and Lily really should've been able to predict that it'd happen—he's grabbing her hand and pulling her out of bed.

"Is coffee really the only reason you wake up so early?" Lily asks as they creep—under James' invisibility cloak—down the corridors towards the kitchens.

"Nah; I've always been an early riser. Drove my parents absolutely mad when I was younger."

"I wonder why," Lily retorts, trying without success to keep her tone harsh. And James just shakes his head, pulling her closer to him underneath the cloak.

"You know where else has really brilliant coffee?" James asks after a few minutes of quiet.

"Where?"

"This small coffee shop in the Wizarding District of Manchester. Dad would always escape to it when Mum was shopping, and that's where I had my first cup of coffee. It's even better than the early morning Hogwarts' brew. You need to try it. They have all sorts of blends, from all over the world. The widest variety of flavours, and they do _amazing_ things with the frothing of the milk."

Lily stops walking, utterly surprised by this sudden and unexpected burst of enthusiasm from her boyfriend. His eyes are alight with that same intensity usually reserved for pranking and Quidditch (and for looking at Lily). And something shifts within Lily, and it dawns on her for the first time.

"James Potter," she says, looking up at the messy-hair, excited boy in front of you. "I think I may just love you."


End file.
